Elevate the Norm is written and edited by one person, Clay Shumate, a practicing secondary classroom teacher. This page explains how articles get made, how claims get checked, and what happens when something turns out to be wrong.
The standard this site is held to
Clay is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, and this site is written to the SPJ Code of Ethics. That is a working commitment rather than a decoration, and its four principles map onto how the rest of this page is organized:
- Seek truth and report it — claims are traced to primary sources, contested evidence is described as contested, and findings are not inflated. See How research is done and sourced.
- Minimize harm — students are people before they are examples. No student is named or made identifiable. See Student privacy.
- Act independently — no sponsor, employer, or district decides what appears here. See Independence.
- Be accountable and transparent — errors are corrected in the open, with a note saying what was wrong. See Corrections.
Education writing is not journalism, and this site does not pretend otherwise. But the questions a reporter is trained to ask — who says so, how do they know, who does this hurt, what happens if it is wrong — are the right questions to ask of classroom advice too. It is a genre that rarely gets asked them.
How topics are chosen
Topics come from three places: problems that come up in Clay’s own classroom, questions teachers actually ask, and gaps where the existing advice on a subject is thin, wrong, or written by someone who has never taught. A topic is only worth covering if there is something specific to say about it for grades 6–12. Broad K–12 coverage produces advice that fits nobody, so it is avoided.
How research is done and sourced
Factual and research claims are traced to a primary source wherever one exists, and cited at the foot of the article so any reader can check the original rather than taking this site’s word for it.
Source preference, in order:
- Peer-reviewed studies and meta-analyses
- University research centers and academic publishers
- Government and state education agencies, including state courses of study
- Established education organizations with a documented methodology
- Practitioner writing, clearly identified as such
Where evidence is contested, the article says so rather than presenting one side as settled. Where a claim is a single study rather than a body of work, it is described that way. Effect sizes and findings are not inflated to make a point land harder.
Classroom experience is kept separate from research
This is the rule that matters most here. What the research says and what happened in one teacher’s room are two different kinds of claim, and blending them is how education writing becomes untrustworthy.
Research is attributed and cited. Classroom experience is written in the first person and framed as exactly what it is: one teacher, one school, one set of students, not evidence of what will work in your room. When the two disagree, the article says that too.
Classroom accounts are never invented. If a lesson, a student interaction, or an outcome did not happen, it does not appear on this site — not as a composite, not as an illustrative example, not as a hypothetical dressed up as a memory. Where a point needs an example that does not exist yet, the article is written without one.
Student privacy
No student is ever named. No student work, image, grade, or record is published. Identifying details are omitted or changed in ways that do not alter the substance of what happened. Where an account cannot be told without making a student identifiable, it is not told.
Review before publication
Every article is checked before it goes live against a fixed list: that each factual claim traces to a cited source, that classroom material is real and correctly separated from research, that no student is identifiable, that links resolve, that the piece answers the question a reader arrived with, and that it does not simply restate another article on this site.
Technology may assist with research organization, drafting, editing, or visual creation. Final editorial decisions, factual review, classroom interpretation, and publication approval are performed by the named author.
Corrections
If something on this site is wrong, please say so through the contact page. Point to the article and the specific claim; that is usually enough.
- Factual errors are corrected as soon as they are confirmed. A substantive correction is noted at the foot of the article, saying what was wrong and when it was fixed. Errors are not quietly edited away.
- Typos and broken links are fixed without a note.
- Disputed interpretations are not corrections. Where a reader makes a fair case that the evidence supports a different reading, the article is updated to reflect the disagreement rather than pretending it does not exist.
Updates and dates
Articles are revisited when the underlying research changes, when guidance or standards are revised, or when classroom use shows the advice was incomplete.
The “updated” date on an article changes only when the substance changes. Refreshing a date to look current, without meaningfully improving the article, is a trick to game search results and is not done here. An article with an old date and no changes is simply an article that did not need changing.
Original resources and graphics
Images, diagrams, and downloadable materials on this site are made for this site. Downloadable resources are free, require no email address, and may be copied and shared for classroom use with the credit line intact. Where a resource is adapted from published work, the source is named on the resource itself.
Independence
This site is independently operated and self-funded. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or speaking for any school, district, or employer. Views here are Clay’s own. Recommendations of tools or materials are unpaid unless a piece states otherwise.